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10 years of George Bush’s Tax Cuts for the Rich Yielded zero job growth

There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Economic output rose at its slowest rate of any decade since the 1930s as well.

Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999 — and the number is sure to have declined further during a difficult 2009. The Aughts were the first decade of falling median incomes since figures were first compiled in the 1960s.

Bush’s Swiss Visit off After Complaints on Torture

GENEVA, Feb 5 (Reuters) – Former U.S. President George W. Bush, under fire from human rights group over allegations of ordering torture, has cancelled a visit to Switzerland where he was to address a Jewish charity gala.

Bush was to be the keynote speaker at Keren Hayesod’s annual dinner on Feb. 12 in Geneva. But pressure has been building on the Swiss government to arrest him and open a criminal investigation if he enters the Alpine country.

Criminal complaints against Bush alleging torture have been lodged in Geneva, court officials say, and several human rights groups signalled that they were poised to take further legal action this week.

Swiss officials have said that Bush would still enjoy a certain diplomatic immunity as a former head of state. Leftist groups had also called for a protest on the day of his visit.

The following video is one that comes from Narco News and so I trust it to not be a piece of propaganda. I find it interesting that the people of Haiti are saying that they want the American soldiers there when in fact it was the Bush Administration that removed their beloved leader, Aristide.

I’m not surprised that they want Aristide back. Like Zalaya of Honduras, Aristide represented the people and stood up for them against the business interests of the USA. Like the people under the leadership of Zalaya in Honduras, and that of Chavez of Venezuela, the lot of the poor people in Haiti saw great improvement under the rule of Aristide.

I want to tell them: “Fat Chance under the current administration, with Hillary Clinton in charge of the State Department, that a leader like Aristide who is so unfriendly to Wall Street to be reinstalled. Look what she did in Honduras. Not only did the US state department support the illegal Honduran coup, the Clintons sent their PR pal, Lanny Davis, down to Honduras to assist the crooks who had taken over in improving their image.

The real truth of Honduras was that Wall Street business interests in the USA, supported by the current US State Department, wanted Zelaya out. They considered him to be anti-business–after all he, like Chavez and Aristide raised the minimum wage–we can’t have that! Hell our own Congress forestalled such actions for the people in our own country for 10 years! Imagine–goods and other living expenses continued to rise–but for 10 years our Congress did not raise minimum wage in our own “democratic” nation. However, you can bet your ass they raised their own salaries numerous times.

SO WITH HILLARY CLINTON IN CHARGE AN IN VIEW OF OBAMA’S DO NOTHING TO UPSET WALL STREET STANCE, THE PEOPLE OF HAITI ARE GOING TO BE DISAPPOINTED IF THEY THINK THAT THEIR BELOVED LEADER WILL BE ALLOWED TO RETURN. Oh Washington will come up with some excuse, but it will just be another lie from the White House. No apparent change from George Bush.

In a 2006 interview with Jean-Bertran Aristide he summed up what the USA did in 2004 with that illegal coup:

“So you have people who were financing misinformation, on the one hand, and destabilisation, on the other, and who encouraged small groups of hoodlums to sow panic on the streets, to create the impression of a government losing control.”

That is exactly what was done under the Bush Administration. They orchestrated this entire lie with the backing of Wall Street.

THE REAL STORY OF HAITI HAS NEVER BEEN TOLD TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BY OUR CORPORATE SPONSORED MEDIA.

Bush regime change brought a bloodbath to Haiti, with the attendant massacres and human rights abuses.It’s hard to believe that the UN occupier’s disregard for Haitian life has just turned on a dime in a matter of days and they are just firing warning shots into the air now. The UN specializes in head shots. Their intent is not to maim, but to kill.

“And then when it comes to 2004-6, suddenly all this indignant talk of violence falls silent. As if nothing had happened. People were being herded into containers and dropped into the sea. That counts for nothing. The endless attacks on Cité Soleil, they count for nothing. I could go on and on. Thousands have died. But they don’t count, because they are just chimères, after all.” -jEAN-Betrand Aristide

To be fair when the UN occupiers first came in June 2004, they just bore silent witness to the killings by the Haitian police and the goons who served the oligarchy. It was not part of their mission to stop the carnage, so they did not intervene to stop it. It was not until April 2005 that the UN began to systematically brutalize the Haitian population. The terror intensified in July and December of 2005 when Brazilian troops leading the “military component” of the UN mission committed bloody massacres in the shantytown of Cite Soleil.

Today’s Washington Postreports that the decade run by George Bush, even with a Democratic majority in the Congress for the last four years, is an economic bust for ordinary Americans. No news to most of us.

Conservative economic neo-liberalism is the name of the con-game that the rich (led by Wall Street and rich Republicans and rich Democrats) have been playing on the American people for the past thirty years. It’s no wonder there has been zero net job creation in the last decade. Job creation is NOT the game of the rich. Their game is to increase the size of the dividends that they receive from their Wall Street investments and to hell with ordinary working Americans. The game of the rich began in earnest with Ronald Reagan. The Great Depression clipped their ears back until the reign of Reagan.

HOW HAVE THEY DONE IT?

1. New speak supported and perpetrated on the American people by mainstream media

The primary means they have used is newspeak of multimillionaire politicians that is supported by mainsteam media–also owned by the rich. They call black white and white black. We are told that Wall Street’s prosperity is aligned with that of Main Street. That is a lie. The prosperity of Wall Street is aligned with the prosperity of the multimillionaires who run our Senate as well as the other upper 1% of the wealthiest in our nation–not with ordinary Americans. These people will do anything to maintain their bottom line for the rich and the size of the dividends they get–this includes firing up to 10% of their workers like Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs did. These people don’t give a damn about Main Street or the people who live on it. Ironic to think of it, but the wealthiest 1% are the true government welfare recipients of our nation–not ordinary Americans. But with their newspeak, people like Ronald Reagan twisted the truth and tried to make out like poor people are the ones ripping off our government and the people of our nation. Another lie. These people are so despicable that while they are robbing our nation blind they are blaming the poor. Bill Clinton for all his “philanthropic” work despised the poor so much that he conspired with Newt Gingrich to put a time limit of five years on poverty. That’s correct. Bill Clinton’s “welfare reform” [almost as good as Obama's "health care reform"] limits the time that families can receive aid for dependent children to five years. What happens after five years and you did can’t provide for your children? Do you just tell them “tough luck” but that money has to go to support the greed of people like Lloyd Blankfein and Joe Lieberman?

2. Seducing people into the world of “easy” credit with ridiculous, once usurious interest rates and refinancing their homes and purchasing new homes and agreeing to RIDICULOUS loan terms, many of which reserved the right to quadruple interest rates whenever the bank decided they wanted to. Everyone was betting against the future–a time when things would be better and we could afford to pay off the debt. They did not realize that the rich were busily stacking the deck against us. People like Lloyd Blankfein, Tim Geithner and other Wall Street Bankers knew EXACTLY what they were doing.

During the late 1990′s and onward into the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, the rich Wall Street bankers made sure that credit flowed easily to ordinary Americans. You may not remember this, but in the 70′s and until the late 1980′s, it was not that easy to get a credit card. By and large only the wealthy had one. Then by the time the mid 1990′s rolled around with the “prosperity” of the Clinton years, you could hardly open your mailbox without an offer in it from some credit card company trying to sign you up. Often all you had to do was dial a telephone number.

NOTE REGARDING “PROSPERITY” OF CLINTON YEARS: It was all a wall street smoke and mirrors game. Perhaps a better analogy would be a “Wall Street House of Cards.” The Clinton Administration, aided and abetted by a Republican Congress were very lax with Wall Street bankers. They were allowed to what amounts to reporting losses as gains to falsely inflate the value of their stocks. Then in 1999 we had what was called the “dot.com crash”. A lot of financial analysts like to say that was not a big deal because the economy “pulled out in May of 1999″ only three months after the crash. The “market” did not pull out of anything. The con artists on Wall Street switched from one shell game to another. May was the beginning of the REFI BOOM and Home equity loans.

There was a reason for this easy credit. In part it lulled Americans into complacency. It gave them the false sense of economic security and the feeling of wealth. I know a lot of my friends lived off hope and their credit cards from late 1999 until about 2001. They didn’t worry. “I’ll make it with my credit cards until the economy picks back up again.” Then in 2001 the mortgage scam hit big time. People bought homes that they COULD afford, contrary to the tripe that mainstream media presents. Yes these people COULD afford the homes as long as the loan payment stayed at the same rate AND as long as they didn’t lose their jobs.

As far as losing jobs, it took until about 2003 for the effects of NAFTA to begin to be fully felt on our economy, by 2003 an estimated 2 to 3 million jobs had been sent out of the country–all in the name of “globalization”, the term that the rich give to their global monopoly game funded by ordinary people of the world. Who do you think provides the funds for the World Bank? Taxpayers like you and me as well as taxpayers of other countries too like England and France.

3. By actually believing in and supporting the founding principles of economic neo-liberalism:

conservative economic neo-liberal ideology that includes:

THE RULE OF THE MARKET. Liberating “free” enterprise or private enterprise from any bonds imposed by the government (the state) no matter how much social damage this causes. Greater openness to international trade and investment, as in NAFTA. Reduce wages by de-unionizing workers and eliminating workers’ rights that had been won over many years of struggle. No more price controls. All in all, total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services. To convince us this is good for us, they say “an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone.” It’s like Reagan’s “supply-side” and “trickle-down” economics — but somehow the wealth didn’t trickle down very much.

CUTTING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE FOR SOCIAL SERVICES like education and health care. REDUCING THE SAFETY-NET FOR THE POOR, and even maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply — again in the name of reducing government’s role. Of course, they don’t oppose government subsidies and tax benefits for business.

DEREGULATION. Reduce government regulation of everything that could diminish profits, including protecting the environment and safety on the job.

PRIVATIZATION. Sell state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors. This includes banks, key industries, railroads, toll highways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water. Although usually done in the name of greater efficiency, which is often needed, privatization has mainly had the effect of concentrating wealth even more in a few hands and making the public pay even more for its needs.

ELIMINATING THE CONCEPT OF “THE PUBLIC GOOD” or “COMMUNITY” and replacing it with “individual responsibility.” Pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their lack of health care, education and social security all by themselves — then blaming them, if they fail, as “lazy.”

Around the world, neo-liberalism has been imposed by powerful financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. It is raging all over Latin America. The first clear example of neo-liberalism at work came in Chile (with thanks to University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman), after the CIA-supported coup against the popularly elected Allende regime in 1973. Other countries followed, with some of the worst effects in Mexico where wages declined 40 to 50% in the first year of NAFTA while the cost of living rose by 80%

THE USA IS INVOLVED IN A HUGE CLASS WAR. THOSE WHO SAY NOT ARE LIARS FROM WALL STREET. REAL PEOPLE FROM MAIN STREET KNOW BETTER!

Under Reagan, Republicans wasted no time in giving the rich a big wet kiss by shifting the tax burden, once 90% under Dwight Eisenhower to the middle class. Next Reagan busted unions, stagnated wages while simultaneously increasing credit to give the illusion of wealth.

Republicans then went after education and did away with civics classes and made education another brass ring that could only be grasped by accumulating massive debt. Read about Reagan and class warfare here.

One of the last pieces for his recipe or Oligarchy was to deregulated the media. Reagan did away with media ownership laws as well as the Fairenss doctrine which made propagandists like Limbaugh possible.

AS IF REAGAN WERE NOT ENOUGH, he was followed by Bill Clinton with his globalization, NAFTA, welfare “reform” and bank deregulation and by George Bush with his privatization schemes and fake wars to finish off the middle class. MORE

NOT UNTIL WE GET ALL THE MULTIMILLIONAIRES OUT OF CONGRESS WILL THINGS CHANGE AND CAN WE HOPE TO RESTORE THE MIDDLE CLASS.

BOTH REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS ARE BAD. The Democrats are better, but only by the degrees of the crumbs that they toss to the rest of us.

“. . .a staggering 52.5 percent of the benefits will go to the richest 5 percent of taxpayers.

President Bush and his supporters argued that these high-income tax cuts would benefit everybody because they would unleash investment that would spark widespread economic prosperity. There seems to be no evidence of this, particularly given the collapse of the economy at the end of the Bush years.

The tax legislation enacted under President George W. Bush from 2001 through 2006 will cost $2.48 trillion over the 2001-2010 period. . .”

It is so absurd that some conservatives think that Bush and Cheney should get a peace award for “liberating” Iraqis that it would be laughable if it were not so pathetic and hideous the carnage that those two conservatives dealt out to the world on a steady basis for 8 long years.

1. The Nobel committee voted BEFORE the International Olympic Committee chose Rio, so the theory that the Nobel Prize vote for Obama was a sympathy vote can be dismissed. “. . .European liberals just can’t tell us enough times how dumb they think we were for sending Bush to the White House. (Twice!) . . ”

2. They gave it to Carter by their own admission because of his sniping at Bush over the looming U.S. Invasion of Iraq.

3. They gave it to Al Gore because he was the one that Bush stole an election from.

4. They gave it to Paul Krugman because he consistently bashed Bush in his column throughout Bush’s reign.

• Number of days during his presidency that Bush spent on vacation at either Camp David or his Texas ranch, as of August 2008 (including partial days off): 916 days

• Total number of years in Bush’s presidency, if these vacation days are subtracted: 5.5[not 8 years]

• Proportion of U.S. workers who have no paid vacations or holidays at work: 1 in 4 [of course if you want to count the unemployed, well hell, they have as much vacation as Bush did--not paid, but still not working]

• Date on which President Bush received a presidential daily briefing entitled “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.” while in the midst of a month-long vacation: 8/6/2001

Yep! chew on that fact once again. George Bush knew that we were in trouble a full month before 9/11 and yet he did not lift a finger to protect the American people. He allowed 9/11 to happen. He was either too busy to think about it while on vacation, or he wanted some terrorist attack to happen so he could have justification to attack Iraq.

I don’t think that Bush actually knew that the Towers were the target. At the same time if he had known, I don’t think that would have changed his mind or made anything any different.

Two things are damn certain:

1. It won’t the the Clinton Punks like Tim Geithner and Rahmn Emanuel who currently run Obama and the White House Administration. This is the same bunch whose great white hope Bill Clinton signed into law the worst bill ever–the Bank Modernization Act of 1999.

2. It won’t the the GOP whose members of the Worst Congress ever and their war criminal 8 year administration of George Bush who correct the excesses on Wall Street. These people wrote the book on excess. Regardless how they put on their populist costumes and pretend to be of the people and by the people.

THE MAJORITY OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY NEED TO KICK OUT THE CLINTON CENTRISTS AND THE BLUE DOGS. We can do it too. We can start by not giving a damn dime to the Democratic Party. Instead we can support progressive and liberal groups like MoveOn and Progressive Democrats of America.

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The Republicans are in a much worse shape. At the moment any way, you have no real grass roots groups as do the Democrats.

All your groups, whether you admit it or not, are sponsored by the same corporate crooks who currently run Wall Street. The two fake “populist” groups at the top of your list are “Freedomworks” run by the corporate right-wing lobbyist Dick Armey and bankrolled by Wall Street Neocons and “Americans for Prosperity” another fake grassroots group that is TOTALLY funded by the 19th richest man in the world–David Koch and his Koch Industries.

I don’t even know where to tell you to go to begin your rebirthing process because at the moment, the roots that you do have are fake. Totally fake.